Bursts

Publisher's Summary

A revolutionary new theory showing how we can predict human behavior-from a radical genius and best-selling author.Can we scientifically predict our future? Scientists and pseudo scientists have been pursuing this mystery for hundreds and perhaps thousands of years. But now, astonishing new research is revealing patterns in human behavior previously thought to be purely random. Precise, orderly, predictable patterns.Albert Laszlo Barabasi, already the world's preeminent researcher on the science of networks, describes his work on this profound mystery in Bursts, a stunningly original investigation into human nature. His approach relies on the digital reality of our world, from mobile phones to the Internet and email, because it has turned society into a huge research laboratory. All those electronic trails of time stamped texts, voicemails, and internet searches add up to a previously unavailable massive data set of statistics that track our movements, our decisions, our lives. Analysis of these trails is offering deep insights into the rhythm of how we do everything. His finding? We work and fight and play in short flourishes of activity followed by next to nothing. The pattern isn't random, it's "bursty." Randomness does not rule our lives in the way scientists have assumed up until now. Illustrating this revolutionary science, Barabasi artfully weaves together the story of a 16th century burst of human activity-a bloody medieval crusade launched in his homeland, Transylvania, with the modern tale of a contemporary artist hunted by the FBI through our post 9/11 surveillance society. These narratives illustrate how predicting human behavior has long been the obsession, sometimes the duty, of those in power.

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful

Very few Bursts of actual science

I was a big fan of Barabasi's first book, "Linked," and bought "Bursts" the minute I saw it without looking for reviews or anything. I regret that impulsive burst. This book is made up of only a small amount of science, the majority is history.

He tries to shoehorn a long and painstakingly detailed description of a 16th century peasant's revolt into his thesis that human behaviors and actions come in bursts. (It quickly becomes clear that this story is important to the author because it takes place in the country of his birth. Unfortunately, he fails to connect it with anything scientific.) Even the discussions of science are largely chronicles of what happened, but with little scientific analysis. We hear about how the author researched Einstein's letter writing habits, or how time and again some simple mathematical model failed to explain the complex behaviors of people and animals.

The book's main premise is unfulfilled. He claims that the science of "bursty" behaviors will allow us to predict human action. He describes dozens of cases, but never brings it all together. Because Linked was such a good book, I gave Barabasi the benefit of the doubt all the way to the end, but I came away feeling that this was the rough notes for what could be a good book.

The book is not a total loss, though. If I had been interested in a history lesson (sometimes I am!) this would have been a much more enjoyable listen. The writing is clear and direct. And the reader does a very good job.

10 hours and twenty dollars later I am angry. Not at
the author but at an editor that allowed this
wandering mess to be published. I don't often start
yelling "get to the point", when I am alone in my
house listening to a book. I have no idea what this
author was trying to accomplish.